Response to the Film William Faulkner: a Life on Paper :: Movie Film Essays

Response to the Film William Faulkner a Life on Paper term I was watching the documentary William Faulkner, a Life on Paper I found it striking how the contrasting people that were interviewed talked close two different sides of the author William Faulkner. His daughters, Jill Faulkner Sommers and his stepdaughter, spoke mainly most his intoxicant abuse and his moodiness whereas Faulkners contemporaries from Oxford underlined Faulkners generosity and kindness. The documentary shows Faulkner not only as gravel of Jill and his stepdaughter but also as a father figure for many others. He had to take care of several families at once. At one floor Faulkner had seventeen dependents to provide for. Many of the people that were interviewed describe Faulkner as being very generous and always willing to help others even when he had intimately nothing himself. iodin special example is his brother Dean who died in an airplane accident and because Faulkner had bought the plane he apparen tly felt guilty about the death of his brother for the rest of his life as his sister-in-law registers in the interview. The interviews with Faulkners daughter Jill and his stepdaughter show a different side of the Nobel Prize-winning author. Jill speaks about her father (whom she calls papi) and his alcohol habits in an objective, distanced way and seems to have accepted the fact that her father was a man who cared about many people, but sometimes would have walked on her. One incident she talks about struck me especially. She remembers that at a party her father was drinking once again and when she asked him to stop he said to her No one remembered Shakespeares child Even when we take the fact into account that he was drunk at that point, this seems to me a rather cruel thing to say to ones daughter. Other women, however, seem to have been of great importance in Faulkners life among them Joan Williams, a young, aspiring author from Memphis. Talking about her Jill Faulkner Sommers says that her father liked the idea of having a protg. Other women Faulkner seems to have been greatly attached to were his mother and his grandmother. Faulkner dedicated Go Down Moses to another woman he apparently cared about very much, the family mammy. The dedication runs To Mammy Caroline Barr, who was born in slavery and gave to my family a fidelity without stint or weighing of recompense and to my childhood an immeasurable devotion and love.